Just a few weeks ago, this was the hottest team in baseball. Now they're the coldest. Ice cold.

When it rains....it turns into ice, freezes over, and gets cracked open with a sledgehammer and shattered to pieces.

Okay, that's a little dramatic. But, Terry Francona did call a team meeting after the loss on Sunday and while it wasn't "rah rah let's turn this around" type of stuff, it was probably a necessary thing to do to get the team together and give them a pep talk. Unfortunately, it didn't result in a win.

INDIANS - 3 | RANGERS - 6

W: Robbie Ross (3-1)

L: Scott Kazmir (3-4)

S: Joe Nathan (20)

[BOXSCORE]

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The Indians lost a heartbreaker to the Yankees yesterday 4-3, as long as you’re willing to define “heartbreaker” as “a game they totally deserved to lose because they did very little of any offensive value and you knew they would not actually complete the comeback.”  As an Indians fan, one’s definition of “broken heart” varies according to the circumstances.  In today’s B-List, Buff is reasonably pleased that Scott Kazmir is average and articulates why he’s so hard on Nick Hagadone.

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So, Justin Masterson is fine, but it wasn’t the Tribe ace that got the ball for Terry Francona in Detroit on Saturday with the Indians set to try to end this five game skid that has plagued them so far in early June.  With an injury to Zach McAllister’s finger, and the need to circumvent any real consequence from Carlos Carrasco’s latest 8-game suspension, Masterson was a healthy scratch today, in favor of the oft-punished piece of the 2009 Cliff Lee deal.  When permitted to pitch by the powers-that-be at Major League baseball, “Cookie” Carrasco has struggled mightily, a recurring theme of late for the Indians.

Called up from AAA, the right-hander wasted no time playing with fire in what would wind up being a 6-4 loss, the Tribe’s tenth consecutive road defeat and sixth straight overall.  The Tigers loaded the bases in each of the first two innings, but Carrasco was fortunate to come away unscathed the first time, retiring former Indians Victor Martinez and Jhonny Peralta, after a walk and two singles set Detroit up with runners on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd with 1 out.  The second time around, an inning later, having already surrendered a run to tie the game at 1 on Andy Dirks single to center field, he had to face Prince Fielder with nowhere to put him.

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­Well Tribe fans, it’s that time of year again. The MLB Rule 4 Draft is set to take place this Thursday evening, and your Cleveland Indians hold the 5^th pick in the first round. Because of MLB’s asinine rules artificially tying draft picks to free agents, the Indians will not pick again until #79 overall, having forfeited their “competitive balance” sandwich pick as well as their 2^nd round pick with the signings of Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher. But you didn’t come here for (another) rant on the Collective Bargaining Agreement; you came here to learn about the player the Indians could potentially end up with at #5 overall in the draft.

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